Sunday, March 02, 2008

Pogs in Crisis!

The big event this week is, of course, the release of the new DC Heroclix set, Crisis. It's got lots of Crisis-y types like Monitor, Harbinger, and the Psycho-Pirate (along with other figures that a normal person might want). But if you really want to replicate the feel of comics' most important and most vastly over-rated crossover, you need the little people who made it all possible.My first idea was to make a pog for each of the victims of the white walls of anti-matter. But after the first couple billion, the process grew somewhat tedious.

So I decided instead to focus on the supporting characters of Marv Wolfman's Magnum Opus.Unfortunately, when your main cast includes every hero, villain, and other named character who's every appeared in over 40 years of DC's history, there's not much room for anyone else. Particularly when you've stupidly reserved all your character-development space for that prickly witch, Kimiyo Hoshi.

Still, a few figures manage to sneak in and stand out, and we mean to honor them by giving them bystander tokens to use in your new Crisis-themed Heroclix games.

The Founding Father! Who knows who this guy might be? We know he's a signer of the Declaration of the Independence. Fortunately, from the picture, we have other clues: he's an older white male, who wears a wig; that should narrow it down! Any guesses? He's too thin to be Button Gwinnett; my money's on Caesar Rodney. Regardless, as a member of the FFs, he obviously gets Leadership.

Krunch, the Microphonophagic Caveman!As previously mentioned, I love this guy. Is he actually eating the microphone, or just attempting to? This is just one of the infinite number of stories that will never be told, Mr. Didio, if you eliminate the multiverse. Again. Why, if this were Star Wars, someone would have written a fanfic novel explaining how this guy is Vandal Savage's father, Krunch Adg, and how Vandal turned him loose in a Warp Zone brothel, to produce for him lots of half-siblings whose body parts he could harvest later, saving his relationship with his daughter Scandal and a previously unmentioned brother, Randall "Randy Sue" Savage. Don't deprive us of that experience, Mr. Didio.

Harold J. Standish! I could prate on and on about Harold's important role in cinematic history as the primary preservator of our silent film heritage. But it's moot because poor Harold isn't a bystander pog; he's a light object. Dead, you know. Dead and upstaged by, of all people, the Boring-est Man Alive, Barry Allen. Harold deserved better.

Barbecue Joan!In her youth, Jay Garrick's wife Joan was a bombshell. Ah, but the years are not always kind, and I suppose trying to keep up with the world's fastest man must be wearing. What was once a beauty mark is now a hopefully-benign mole. By this point Joan looks like the pack-a-day waitress who gives you grief at a roadside diner just outside of Baltimore: "Ya want this steak medium, buddy, cuz I got otha tables, you know?" I'm thinking that steak is on the menu every night at the Garrick house. And baked potatoes with cream cheese. Ya want the apple pie with that, hon?

Drunk Wildcatita! Oh, I know I should be nicer to her, but, honestly, I just can't do it. The espag-lish frac-toorado, the third-person self-reference, the... the bare feet. I abhor her. Oh, well, it's not too long after this that she swells the ranks of the Rolling Head of Pantha Back-Up Singers, courtesy of the not-particularly respectful Eclipso. But during the Crisis, she stumbled across the rooftops and out of our hearts, the perfect symbol of How the Opportunity Presented By a Universal Reboot Was About to Be Almost Completely Wasted. For that reason alone, she should be detested. Universally, so to speak. Note that she has Leap/Climb and Toughness, so you can have her stagger her way up to a rooftop, then knock her off with Force Blast. Good times.

The Warp Zone Newsboy!In one panel, this one person has come to symbolize the indefatigable spirit of the entire DCU and its denizens. When the world -- not just yours, but ever world, and all possible worlds -- seems to be ending, what do you do? Sell programs.

Mrs. Gofooey! Now that is a broad. Mrs. G. is from the wide open spaces of the Old West (very wide). Now I know why all those movies were filmed in panoramavision. For obvious reason, she merits Toughness.

David & Phyllis Gerrold of Chicago! Sure, laugh if you want, but they got more screen-time than Starman. And they got lines. And four panels. And what did Starman get? Two one-panel postage stamp cameos, one of which was silent. More evidence of what a bad writer Wolfman is. You wanted DRAMA in Crisis? Starman IS drama.

Imagine how much cooler Crisis would have been-- would still be! -- if it had been told entirely from the perspective of the Golden Age Starman. Literature teachers would be giving their students COIE to read, instead of penny-dreadful folderol like Great Expectations.

But instead he chose the Gerrolds and the alter-dimensional after-image of their dead hippie daughter (extra points if you remember her name without looking it up!). Sigh. Yet another wasted opportunity due to the death of the multiverse.

Mr. Didio, these pogs cry out to you like moribund Whoville-ites: Do not kill our worlds!

In any case, readers, enjoy using this pogs with your new "Warp Zone" maps and Crisis clix!

9 comments:

As a born and bred Delawarean, Scipio, I thank you for the reference. Unfortunately I have to admit that the handsome devil depicted therein could not be or beloved Ceasar Rodney. Rodney suffered from a facial cancer that was so disfiguring he wore a silk scarf over his face to conceal it. Thomas McKean, perhaps?